


At the End of all Things

by omnia_sol



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Character Study, Daddy Issues, Did I mention the daddy issues, Emotionally Constipated Australians, GREAT BARRIER REEF OF ANGST, Gen, Grumpy Chuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-23
Updated: 2013-07-23
Packaged: 2017-12-21 02:58:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/894987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omnia_sol/pseuds/omnia_sol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn’t know what he’s hoping for -- praise? Acknowledgment? All of the above? </p>
<p>His dad looks away. </p>
<p>“Your mum should have been here,” he says.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>That’s the moment he stops thinking of Herc as his dad. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>(Character study featuring our favourite grumpy Australian and his emotionally constipated father.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	At the End of all Things

**Author's Note:**

> For the [Pacific Rim kink meme](http://pacificrimkink.livejournal.com/) and the prompt "Herc/Chuck, daddy issues."

When the first punch lands, Chuck’s fury is almost overpowered by the sense of _finally, thank God_ that washes over his entire body. He’d been _burning_ to punch Raleigh from the moment he washed up in the Shatterdome, and Raleigh’s near-disastrous attempt to drift with Mako gives him the perfect opportunity to let one fly. The idiot almost blew up the Shatterdome, for fuck’s sake. One person doesn’t get to almost take away everything Chuck lives for _twice_ without getting hell for it.

Raleigh punches him so hard blood goes flying, and an unbidden memory springs to Chuck’s mind; one of Herc (because he’s always Herc in his mind, not _dad_ ; he hasn’t been _dad_ for ages) saying, “fight with your words, not with your fists.” Chuck lands two solid punches on Raleigh’s ribs and thinks, _oops_. Herc can just add this to his Reasons Why Chuck is a Fuck-up list, the length of which must’ve reached fucking biblical proportions by now. 

He’s spared further thought by the force of Raleigh wrenching his arm backwards and throwing him against the wall, crumpling pipes and sending hot steam billowing. Even as he snarls and clutches his ribs, he feels satisfied -- sated -- because _damn_ he’s wanted to do this for years. The bruise on Raleigh’s face almost makes up for the way Herc explodes out of the Marshal’s quarters, _furious_ , and the only thing that’s more powerful than Chuck’s hate for Herc in that moment is how much he loves him (and if that isn’t fucked up, he doesn’t know what is.)

“This ends _now_!” Herc roars, and Chuck looks Raleigh dead in the eye and smirks.

_Ra_ leigh looks like he doesn’t know what’s hit him.

 

When Chuck goes off to die, the memory of his fist connecting with Raleigh’s face almost makes up for it.

 

Almost.

 

* * * 

He’s nine when the first kaiju attacks San Francisco. None of his favourite cartoons are playing on the telly; every channel is streaming live footage of the attack, cameras panning across the city and the smouldering ruins of the Golden Gate Bridge. He distinctly remembers his mum watching in horror, but Chuck doesn’t understand. When he looks back on this memory, all he can think of is how he watched the bridge disappear beneath the harbor while thinking, _Of course. The Golden Gate Bridge always gets destroyed in the apocalypse movies._ He’s not old enough to understand that this isn’t an apocalypse movie; nine-year-old Chuck’s world consists of cartoons and Star Wars lego sets and helping his mum in the garden. There’s no room yet for alien monsters or the end of the world.

 

_“Dad, are you watching?”_

It’s the question that he poses most of all, even more than “can we keep it?” and “but why not?” (Chuck has a habit of taking in stray animals.)

He spends most of his childhood fighting for his dad’s attention, yelling “Dad, look at me! Did you see that?” His mum tells him that his dad is a Very Important Person who protects The People of Sydney and The Greater Good, so when he _is_ home Chuck is always trying to do bigger and better things to impress him -- he’s riding his bike without holding the handlebars, or he’s climbing the tallest tree in the backyard, or he gets _this close_ to catching that frog _(“don’t bother the frogs, honey!” his mum calls.)_ And on the rare occasions when his dad isn’t off piloting for the air force and _is_ looking, he will smile and ruffle Chuck’s hair -- the hair that still hasn’t made up its mind whether it’s going to be blonde or ginger. (If Chuck had his way it’d be ginger, because that’s the colour of his dad’s hair; but he’s only eleven and he can’t even make Max listen to him, much less his hair.) 

His dad may be his hero, but his mum is the center of his universe. He sees the way his dad looks at her (like she is the sun and stars) because she is all that is good and beautiful in this world. She is their sun, their lifeline; the person that turns them from three people into a family.

It is shocking how quickly they fall apart without her. 

 

The kaiju sirens go off on one of those rare Sunday mornings when his dad is actually home, reading The Sydney Morning Herald. _(“Dad, look! I taught Max a trick!”)_ The moment the sirens go off, everything freezes and then speeds up; the next few minutes are a whirlwind as his dad throws on his uniform and becomes Captain Hansen, not _dad_ or _dear_. Before he runs out the door, he crouches down to Chuck’s level, eyes blazing, and says, _“protect your mum.”_

Then he’s gone, and Chuck can hardly believe it because his dad has never spoken to him like that before, never _needed_ him for anything. The next thing he knows he is holding his mum’s hand as tightly as he can as they and Max run through the streets of Sydney toward the nearest shelter.

His mum is holding his hand as tightly as he is hers, but he learns then at the fragile age of seven that the kaiju doesn’t care. It -- Scissure, although he doesn’t know that then -- rips through the ceiling of the shelter and people are yelling, but he locks onto the sound of his mum’s voice, screaming _not him, not my boy_ , as a claw like the end of the world comes toward him. She pushes him to the ground so hard it knocks the breath from his lungs, and looks up just in time to see her disappear forever.

Only then does he start crying. 

 

 

He is alone.

He is huddled in the corner of the ruined shelter with his knees drawn up to his chest and his face buried in his arms. Max whines and whuffles, nudging and licking his hand, but when there is no response he settles for curling up next to Chuck and waiting. The police come three hours later, by which time Chuck is out of tears. They tell him that the military has lured the kaiju away from the city, and does he have any family? No? Anyone he can stay with?

In the end they take him to the police station to wait for his dad. He is terrified that he isn’t going to come, because if the military’s in charge of fighting the kaiju away, that means his dad is out there too. He holds Max as tight as he can (but holding his mum’s hand didn’t stop her from leaving, did it?) and he bites his lip until it bleeds because he’s not going to cry; he knows what his dad thinks about crying. 

He waits for three days, and when his dad finally comes running into the station bloodied and bruised, Chuck doesn’t see the utter relief in his dad’s eyes. He only sees the horror that Chuck is alone. He can hear the words _“protect your mum”_ echoing inside his head, even as his dad crushes him into a hug.

All he can think is that he has failed. He has failed where his father would never have failed, and because of that his mum is dead.

 

 

Their house is destroyed, which is a relief because they could never have lived there without her. Shortly afterward, the Jaeger program is launched and his father is one of the first to be submit his candidacy. He is honorably discharged from the Defense Force and then they are moving to the Sydney Shatterdome, bringing only Max and a few other belongings. The Pan-Pacific Defense Corps becomes their lives. 

Nevermind that they’re barely able to talk to each other, never mind that Chuck is always drowning in grief and rage and inadequacy when he’s around his dad. _Protect your mum_ , he always hears him say. Chuck is as much the son of Herc as he is the son of the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps; he is filled with that potent combination of justified rage and youthful invincibility that convinces him it’s his destiny to become a Jaeger pilot. He grows up seeing the inside of a cockpit more than he sees his own room and he lives and breathes Jaeger techniques with a single-minded intensity rivaled by only one other person, a girl with her own vendetta to fulfill: Mako Mori. 

 

 

He graduates at the top of his class, tied with Mako Mori. 

He is proud and doesn’t try to hide it; he can’t help his cocky smirk, or if he walks with an extra swagger to his step. He tries not to think about how he had looked for his dad during the ceremony -- _Dad, are you watching?_ and locked eyes with him, searching for a hint of pride, joy, anything -- but found only the usual steeliness in them. It doesn’t matter. (It’s what he tells himself.) He’ll be proud enough for the both of them. He and his graduating class celebrate loudly and drink copiously and when Chuck stumbles back to his room the last thing he expects is to see his dad waiting outside his door.

Chuck holds his breath and refuses to let himself hope. He doesn’t even know what he’s hoping for -- praise? Acknowledgment? All of the above? -- but there’s only regret in his dad’s eyes as he looks at him, and Chuck braces himself and waits for the blow to fall.

His dad looks away. 

“Your mum should have been here,” he says.

 

That’s the moment he stops thinking of Herc as his dad. 

 

He understands a lot of things about Herc when they’re in the drift -- they have to be of one mind for it to work -- but that doesn’t mean Chuck accepts any of them. They’re able to shove their issues away, pretend they don’t exist, and charge into battle. 

It doesn’t solve anything, but they’re better off pretending they don’t have feelings; feelings have no home in a soldier. He hates seeing Herc’s memories -- seeing his mum dance around the corner of Herc’s mind _(protect your mum)_ , watching Herc in his old Jaeger fighting a kaiju with Gipsy Danger, the two Jaegers working perfectly in sync. When they go back to the Shatterdome to celebrate the kill -- they brought it down in record time -- he watches Herc grin as he shakes Yancy’s hand, slaps Raleigh’s back, and says _well done_.

That _well done_ is a slap in the face. Of course pilots like Yancy and Raleigh -- pilots that almost got the Jaeger program shut down -- get to have Herc’s approval when _Chuck_ doesn’t, when _he’s_ the better pilot by far. He’s trained his whole life for this, and because of pilots like Raleigh, the Striker Eureka -- his _life_ \-- is decommissioned a day before Mutavore hits. If they had been reactivated twenty, maybe maybe minutes earlier, then maybe Chuck’s favourite childhood ice cream parlour wouldn’t be buried under ten feet of debris right now; and if it hadn’t been for pilots like Raleigh maybe he wouldn’t have been decommissioned at all. 

He’s still seeing red when someone points a camera at him, and it’s as if someone’s pulled the trigger because his rage starts pouring out, a crimson typhoon of vitriol aimed at the man he blames for shutting down the Jaeger program and everything Chuck lives for -- _Raleigh Becket_.

 

 

* * * 

 

This is it. This is the end. 

As much as Chuck would like to think he’s coming back from this mission, he knows not to kid himself. He doesn’t know if it’s worse or better that Herc’s not going to be with him, because some selfish part of him wants Herc by his side, now at the end of all things. He says his goodbye numbly -- doesn’t even remember what he says -- and crouches down to squeeze Max’s muzzle.

It’s time. He feels strangely calm. 

He hears Herc call, “Stacker!” and Chuck turns around, and it’s like graduation day all over again, waiting to hear the words he’s always waited his whole life to hear Herc say. 

“That’s my son you’ve got there,” Herc says, his voice catching. “My son.” 

 

 

He has minutes left. Seconds. 

Stacker looks at him, asking a silent _“Are you ready?”_ and Chuck swallows hard.

“It was a pleasure sir,” he says, and there is something peculiar about the way Stacker is looking at him, but he doesn’t have time to think about that anymore.

_Dad, are you watching?_ he thinks -- but he’s gone before he knows what hits him. 

 

 

He wakes up slowly, squinting against the blinding light that assaults his eyes. _Well, that was it,_ he thinks, _that was the end_. It could’ve been worse; he hadn’t felt a thing. Maybe it just hasn’t sunk in yet but he _still_ doesn’t register anything except his own exhaustion. He refuses to open his eyes because he’s not quite ready to deal with what’s on the other side; he doesn’t _want_ to be...dead. His body feels oddly heavy, so so much for all the Sunday school bullshit about pearly gates and angel wings. (To be honest he’s a bit surprised he’s not surrounded by flames, if you catch his drift. He’s not exactly the angelic type.) 

Then he registers the faint whirring and beeping of machines and the unmistakable scent of disinfectant, and now he’s _definitely_ not opening his eyes because this has got to be some sort of cruel trick. 

“Chuck?” an achingly familiar voice says, distorted by worry and fear. “Son? It’s going to be okay. I’ve got you.” 

Chuck opens his eyes, and Herc Hanson blurs into view. Somehow, Chuck manages to smile.

_Dad._

 

**the end.**  



End file.
